Welcome back to the second chapter of "Dancing with the Devil!" A big thanks to everyone who favorited and followed this story! It's very encouraging.

DISCLAIMER: I do not own Devil May Cry or any of it's characters. This story was done for fun and not for profit. All rights go to their respectful owners.

Read, review, and enjoy!

"When you…..gonna….up?"

"...not sure...Did she...her head?"

Thia slowly drifted awake to the sound of a pair of faint, feminine voices near her. One voice sounded significantly younger than the other, but they were so faint compared to the ringing whine that filled her head. Since when did she have an alarm clock inside her skull?

My body feels...like lead.

A dull, throbbing pain ran up and down her leg and her her head felt like it had been used as a bowling ball, but every part of her felt like it was weighed down by a bag of wet cement. All she could manage was small, quick motions. Flexing her fingertips. Wiggling her nose. Curling her toes. Small things like that. And her throat. God, did her tongue always feel like sandpaper?

A small groan must have escaped her because the voices suddenly stopped and she heard dull thuds, footsteps, coming towards her.

"Patty, go get the kid," one voice ordered. There was an affirmative and another rush of footsteps. Someone moved closer to Thia and she felt long fingers wrap around her wrist.

"Well, you've got a pulse," she heard the person say. "About damn time you came back from the dead, lady. Think you can show me those pretty little eyes of yours, and let me know you haven't gone vegetable on us?"

It took a bit of effort, but Thia eventually got her heavy lids up. Bright light assaulted her eyes and she was tempted to close them again. If not for the dark blob looming over her, she would have. And as her eyes adjusted to the light, the blob took shape into a face. A woman's face.

She was actually quite pretty, with short black hair that fanned out around around her head, and fringe feathered out over her forehead. Her skin, Thia noticed, was picture-perfect. Wait, no. There was a thin, faded scar running across the bridge of her nose. But besides that, her skin was pretty damn flawless. A pair of mismatched eyes, one blue and the other red, gazed down at her.

"Wh...Who are...you?" Thia's voice croaked as she strained to get the little sentence out. Her head was still in a fog, but she knew for sure that she had never seen this woman before. Not only that, but she had no idea where she was either. "Where are we?"

The room they were currently in was...Spartan, to say the least. Bare walls in need of a new coat of paint (and plaster in some places), a small walk-in closet with a few old coats in it. A single light bulb hung from a fixture in the cracked ceiling and the one window was covered by dusty blinds. The bed she was laying in was simple with black sheets and matching cover. There wasn't even a rug or carpet on the floor, just worn hardwood. And everything looked like it needed a good sweeping. And dusting. Thia was glad that she didn't have problems with allergies. Lord knows she's be sneezing up a lung or something in this room otherwise.

After giving her a quick once over, the woman helped Thia lean up against the bed's headboard. "This would be the part where I tell you that you've found yourself at the fabulous and famous Devil Hunting Agency known as Devil May Cry, but this dump is far from fabulous and is more infamous than anything else. And lucky you, you're in the 'better' kept guest room. Name's Lady, by the way."

Thia dipped her head in a quick nod. Devil May Cry? What an odd name for an agency.

Although, if this place is a Devil Hunting business, I guess it makes plenty of sense. Devil Hunters are cocky sons of bitches, aren't they?

Thia didn't have much experience with anything occult, but she did hear rumors and stories every once in a while. Given Corvell's close proximity to Fortuna, it was to be expected. But at least that answered some questions. She was in the guest room of the Devil May Cry Devil Hunting Agency with some lady named...Lady. Well, alright.

"Tell me...Lady. How did I get here?"

Lady met her suspicious stare head on, unblinking. She must be used to it. "You tell me. What do you remember?"

Thia glared at the woman for answering back with another question. That had always been one of her pet peeves. But even as her irritation levels rose, her mind began to fumble around for an answer. How did she get from Point A to Point C?

Lacie and I were out shopping. We stopped by the ornament shop and were heading back home and then…?

Thia pushed herself up as she reached to fill in the gaps. By doing so, the thin blanket that had been placed over her shifted down and revealed something wrapped in long strips of white cotton bandages.

Her leg. Her entire leg.

The demons.

It all came back to her in a sudden flood of memories. The attack on the town. Being saved by those two men, Dante and Nero. Running off and…

"Oh god," Thia began to tremble as she remembered the demons throwing her like a rag doll in that alley. "Th-The demons, they were going to rip us to shreds and...Lacie. What happened to Lacie?!"

As if on cue, the door flew open, smashing into the wall as a bundle of purple and white sped through. Lacie jumped up onto the bed and tackled Thia, throwing her thin arms around her neck.

"Thia, you're awake!" Lacie cried out, pressing her face into the blonde's shoulder. "I'm so glad!"

Thia laughed as she held her daughter close to her. They had survived. Both of them. Thank goodness...

That thought alone was a burden lifted off of her shoulders. She and Lacie were alive and safe, she knew that. No demon in their right mind would ever come near a Devil Hunter, and if this place was an agency, it had to have plenty of them!

As she stroked and reassured Lacie, a young teen walked up to the side of the bed and stood next to Lady. Dressed in frilly, not to mention expensive, clothes, she was an adorable concoction of blonde curly hair, blue eyes, and pink.

"Lacie's been bouncing off the walls waiting for you to wake up," the girl giggled, pouting at Thia playfully. "You shouldn't have kept her waiting, you know."

Lacie pulled back and grinned at the girl. "I was not, Patty! I was too busy watching you chase Dante and Nero around with a broom."

"Well, what do you expect?" Patty retorted. "Every time I come here, the place is a mess! I should be getting paid for all the times I clean it up."

Thia watched the two banter, growing more and more confused with every second. How long had she been out? And how did they get here? There wasn't a place called Devil May Cry in Corvell, so they had to be in a different city. And the alley...She thought for sure they had been done for, but something happened, and she couldn't figure it out.

"Fire…"

Yes. A wall of fire and some big, hulking shape. That was the last thing she remembered before passing out. It had been so hot and so bright that she could have passed out from that alone. It had been completely unnatural, so what was it?

"If you want, we can take you downstairs." Thia looked up to see Lady standing next to her, hand outstretched. "You've got questions, right? Well, we've got some of our own. The sooner you get up and moving, the sooner we figure this all out."

Thia couldn't agree more. So with the help of Lady and Patty, she was able to hobble out of the room and make it downstairs without any further injury.

According to Lady, Thia had been found with about two wine bottles' worth of broken glass stuck all over her leg. They'd been able to remove it without extra damage, but no one had been sure if she'd suffered any serious nerve damage or not. Some of the glass shards had been buried in her calf and thigh muscles pretty deep, resulting in a line of stitches down the inside of her thigh. Thia wasn't a doctor, but as long as she could move her leg later, she'd power through the pain now. She'd been through much worse and could fully function. A leg injury was nothing.

A whistle pierced her revelries. Down below, in some sort of parlor/office, was a familiar white-haired man in a red jacket.

Dante was sitting behind a desk, feet up on top of it, and perching a magazine on his chest. Those two ridiculously large guns lay next to his feet and on either side of a bottle of whiskey. Two ice blue eyes sparkled mischieviously at her.

"Well, well. Sleeping Beauty finally awakens. I was starting to think I'd need to kiss you or something, babe." A scoff came from a different part of the room, where Nero was playing pool with a tall blonde woman.

"I'm pretty sure that an old geezer of a devil is a far cry from Prince Charming, Old Man." Nero swung his pool cue up on his shoulder and smirked at Dante, who rolled his eyes and flipped him off in return.

"Aw, shaddup, kid."

"Now, now, girls. This is hardly the time for bickering." The woman playing pool lined up her shot and sunk the seven ball in a corner pocket before coming around to the staircase.

"Thia Fisher, right?" Thia nodded, eyeing the leather-clad woman warily and earning a laugh in return. "Easy, I only bite demons. I'm Trish. I assume you've been introduced to the rest of our little group?"

Thia nodded again and Trish took over and helped her to a couch over by Dante's desk. The blondes grimaced at the sight of a cold, rubbery slice of pizza lying on the arm before Patty found it and started ripping into Dante. Thia couldn't help but stare.

Trish chuckled dryly. "That happens more often than you think. So Thia...We've heard what happened from Lacie's point of view. Can you tell us what you saw with your own eyes?"

"Oh, before you do that!" Patty turned away from Dante and fixed Thia with a wide-eyed, expectant stare. "Why does Lacie look like Dante and Nero?"

Thia blinked, staring back at the young blonde. "Huh…?"

Patty snorted and scooped Lacie up off of the ground, setting her on top of the desk. She pulled the hood down from Lacie's head with a grand flourish.

"See?" she cried. "She looks just like them!"

Thia felt her jaw drop. Patty was...right.

She hadn't noticed it earlier when she first met the two men, and up until now she hadn't even thought about it. Lacie was always in the habit of wearing hoods over her face to begin with, so Thia hadn't noticed right on the spot. But now that the hood was gone, the resemblance was shocking. Almost alarmingly so.

Lacie was like a younger, female version of Dante and Nero. They all had the same pale skin. Same nose, lips, pale blue eyes. Lacie's face was softer and rounded, but uncannily similar. Her long hair was the exact same white. And when the three stared at each other, Dante's smirk prompted a matching one from the youngest.

"So that's what you look like under that hood." Dante leaned forward and ruffled Lacie's hair, sending the waist-length strands flying all over the place. "I bet you're gonna be a real looker when you get older too."

Lacie huffed and swatted his hand away, giving the man the cold shoulder to fix her hair. "I told you, Patty. Thia wouldn't know because she found me and I can't remember. We looked and looked, but I'm still lost."

"Lost?" Lady looked between Lacie and Patty. "What do you mean 'lost'?"

Thia sighed, signalling to Lacie that she would take over the explanations. She told everyone how, over a year ago, she had found an injured and sick little girl hiding in her garden, wearing nothing but a tattered dress and a ripped pair of stockings. She had taken the girl to the hospital at once, and stayed the whole day and through the night until the little girl woke up, only to learn that she couldn't remember anything. The doctors called her condition "post-traumatic amnesia" brought on by a harsh blow to the head she had received from unknown means. No one had been sure if or when he memory would return, but with the help of one of the doctors (a family friend to Thia), the girl had been released to her once she had recovered from her fever. Thia explained how they tried to find Lacie's family and where she came from, and how every idea came up dry.

"Eventually, it got to the point where there was nowhere for Lacie to go," she finished up, leaning back and rubbing her sore leg. "I adopted Lace and we've been together ever since."

"Very odd, to say the least," Trish commented. "It was strange enough to see how much Nero looked like Dante, but now a small child as well. Very...curious." Thia could practically see the gears turning in the blonde's head as she seemed to mill the information over in her head. She had to agree too. It was very odd.

Lacie's looks had always struck her as a little peculiar, but for the girl's sake she hadn't commented much about it. Thia had seen pale blonde hair before, but never the kind of pure white that Lacie had. Hell, her white hair had been part of the reason they decided on "Lacie" for her name. Tt matched a few bits of the lace sewn onto the dress she had worn when they first met.

There was plenty about the child that was just plain strange. Her colorless hair and pale skin made her seem ghost-like, while her eyes belied a kind of sharpness and other worldly wisdom she'd never seen before, be it in an adult or child. She'd seen it many times, a strange glimmer of insight in the girl's eyes, here one second and gone in a flash, that occured whenever Lacie seemed unsure of a decision. She would sometimes cock her head to one side, as if some unseen voice was whispering in her ear. And more often than not, Lacie's demeanor would flip from a normal child's attitude to something altogether inhuman. A strange look would come over her, making the seven-year-old child look coldly mature way beyond her years in a way that never failed to send chills down Thia's spine.

All in all, Lacie was a very peculiar child.

"Okay, so let's go over what we know," Nero hopped up from behind the couch and sat himself down on the top of Dante's desk, snatching a piece of pizza right out of his hands. "We've got a little tyke running around, looking like the Trigger happy lunatic over there, who nobody knows where she came from. A sudden demon attack that crops up in a town that until then had no demonic activity whatsoever. The demons start chasing after our little doppelganger girl and her mother. The question is...Why?"

"That's what the Hell I want to know," Thia demanded heatedly. She and her baby girl were attacked for a reason, and when she figured out why, so help her God…

"That's because one of 'em has a hit out on her..."

Before Thia could even register the unfamiliar voice, she found herself pulled behind the couch by Trish as Patty and Lacie dove under the pool table. And the Devil Hunters? Well, they did what apparently they did best. Pull out their guns and start shooting.

She knew she should have been shocked seeing the four immediately start filling the office full of holes. Especially seeing everyone seemed armed to the teeth, what with all the guns, Dante and Nero's swords, and Lady's freakishly overkill rocket launcher. Hell, the amount of firepower in that one room should have sent her into a conniption fit. But with everything that had happened so far…Who really gives a damn?

Anyway, back to the reason everyone was getting trigger happy. The front door had suddenly fallen in on itself, prompting an angered shout from Dante. The next second, a miniature whirlwind of fire appeared in the doorway. Thia couldn't believe it. Sure, she'd seen that kind of thing in the movies before, but an actual flaming tornado just across the room from her? Come on!

"Oi, will you people quit shooting at me?! I don't wanna be Swiss cheese here!" As quickly as it appeared, the fiery cyclone receded. In its place, a small but very peeved person. Or, not quite person…

Looking to be about nine or ten, the boy was scowling at his now bullet hole-filled clothes, giving everyone a perfect view of his abnormally long incisors and the sharp nails he used to claw at the remains of his blood-red T-shirt. He was dark-skinned, with a long scar running down face and burning orange eyes. His hair was an unruly, pitch-black mess that looked like it had been attacked by a toddler wielding a pair of safety scissors. The longest pieces trailed down to his feet, with a little tuft sticking out on either side of his head. Stranger still, patches of smoke curled around his arms and shoulders. He was steaming, literally and metaphorically.

The boy let out a feral, dog-like snarl and glared at them. "I just found this shirt, and now it's ruined! Stupid jerks!"

Thia jumped as Dante and Nero let off a pair of shots. The boy rolled down the steps, easily dodging the bullets. He came back up to his feet in one quick motion, glaring at the two Devil Hunters as if they were nothing but vermin.

"Cool your heels, Hunters," he barked. "I ain't here for either of ya!"

"Big words for the little demon that just came crashing through my front door." Dante smirked as he continued to point his guns at the boy. Thia practically jumped in her skin as he let off another round of bullets.

"Dammit, Dante!" she spit through clenched teeth. "If you're going to shoot him, shoot him!" If this kid was a demon, playing around was the last thing he should be doing.

Despite the massive amount of lead flying towards him, the boy remained unusually calm. In fact, he seemed more annoyed than anything. An irritated snort caused his nostrils to flare out as his orange eyes burned. Streams of fire deflected any bullet that got too close to the boy as he strode inside the building. He sniffed around, as if looking for something.

"Don't waste my time, Devil Hunter," he snarled, throwing his hand out. A small column of fire exploded at Dante's desk, igniting the alcohol inside of the whiskey bottle and generating a flare up. Dante jumped back.

"Why don't we play then, puppy? C'mon, I know I have a bone around here somewhere."

The boy ignored his quips and continued looking around the agency. He seemed relentless, running all over the place. Tipping filing cabinets, yanking out drawers, and throwing tables and chairs out of the way. For such a young boy, he possessed incredible strength. And the fire protecting him. Was this the power of a demon?

Finally, Thia caught his gaze settling on something in the corner of the room. The room-destroying rampage ceased as the boy tilted his head to one side. One of his ears flicked as a wide, childish smile broke out on his face. Thia could see the glint of his fangs as he raced over to the pool table as fast as his legs could carry him.

What is he...Ah! The demon boy was heading right for Lacie and Patty, both hiding under the pool table.

"Stay away from my little girl!" Thia jumped over the couch, wincing from the pain that shot up her leg. She felt something tear and snap. Did she rip some stitches? No, not important. Lacie and Patty. She had to get to Lacie and Patty!

Everyone moved to intercept the demon child, but he got to the girls first. But before anyone could blast him into oblivion, the boy came skidding to a stop. He gave an almost childlike yip.

"I finally found you, Master!"

The room stilled. Guns clicked, finally out of bullets. Rebellion and Red Queen halted in mid swing, just above the boy's head. He didn't so much as flick an ear.

Lacie blinked. "Me…?"

Well, well, well. Who could this strange little demon boy be? And why is he calling Lacie "Master"? And why does she look like our favorite Devil Hunter boys? Why am I asking so many questions?

That's it for now, seeing as I've got classes tomorrow and can't afford to loose any sleep. Tune in next time, and tell me what you think in the box below.

BYE!